The White Witch
by Sera dy Relandrant
Summary: Heeding his mother's warning, Robb never sends Theon to the Iron Islands. Instead Theon leaves for Arendelle in the Bay of Seals to woo Lady Elsa for her aid during the War of the Five Kings.
1. Arendelle

**Summary: Heeding his mother's warning, Robb sends Theon to Arendelle in the Bay of Seals, instead of to the Iron Islands, to woo the Lady Elsa for aid during the War of the Five Kings.**

* * *

_She was so beautiful and delicate, but she was of ice, of dazzling, sparkling ice; yet she lived; her eyes gazed fixedly, like two stars; but there was neither quiet nor repose in them. _

**\- The Snow Queen**

* * *

Anna of Arendelle hosts the welcoming feast and Theon thinks _my, what a beddable wench we have here._

"We married for love," the bridegroom assures him. _A good-looking fop_, Theon decides of Ser Hans, the youngest in a brood of thirteen from a fecund family in the Riverlands. Pompously he picks up the girl's limp wrist and kisses it. She flinches, a host of emotions playing on her transparent face. "It was love at first sight."

"It was marriage at first sight, certainly," Lady Anna says, without a trace of irony. By right she should rule Arendelle in her sister's absence but her husband seems to have taken over as lord and castellan both. A subtle man, free with his smiles and ruthless in his charm - everything his young wife is not. _Courtesy is his armour, _Theon decides, amused as he remembers Lady Catelyn's constant admonitions to her daughters.

Under his expansive host and his soft hostess and the generosity of the feasting board, Theon begins to enjoy himself._ Her sister can't be so bad after all, _he decides, _and on the way back I might even have time to give this one a merry night. She'd welcome it. _They might have married for love but Theon is willing to wager it was all on the feckless girl's side.

Ser Hans speaks of Arendelle's trade in furs and ice and tin, the goodness of the late Lord Stark of lamented memory and the greatness of his son. On the matter of his reclusive good-sister he is reticent, on the matter of the paucity of men he has delivered to Winterfell even more so.

"You must understand how small Arendelle is and how few able-bodied men we have. I would have led them myself," he says, with a sigh as deep as the Bay of Seals, "but for Lady Anna's condition. I could never leave her alone, certainly not when she carries so heavy a burden." He smiles indulgently, a tender husband, and rests his hand on her stomach. Lady Anna opens her mouth but her husband cuts her off smoothly once again, leaving her looking pettish with her mouth half-open.

"My lady is very young and so fragile. She has never shouldered the yoke of rule - except perhaps in the matter of her little pets." He chuckles and then adds delicately, "If the Lady Elsa chooses to grace our young lord with her presence might not, ahem, _concessions_ be made for Arendelle?"

"King," Theon reminds him. "Robb Stark was crowned at Riverrun."

"Of course," Ser Hans agrees amiably, "my loyalties are not conflicted. King Robb is my only king. My father and brothers – twelve of them, you know – are all loyal bannermen to the Tullys of Riverrun. It is different for Anna and Elsa of course, they have their ties to the Westerlands..."

"Lannister cousins we've never seen, save at my wedding," Anna says, grimacing. "Lady Rapunzel of Corona is my cousin, her mother and mine were sisters."

"About the concessions-" Ser Hans wheedles.

"You'll have them," Theon says curtly and Hans' eyes sparkle like those of a young maid in love. "Your men will be sent back if we can come to arrangements with Lady Elsa."

Arendelle is, as Hans has more than twice pointed out, too small, too meanly equipped with men and arms to be of much strategic importance. _The White Witch will more than make up for a hundred odd peasants. _That's what his men have taken to calling her - the White Witch who can summon winter storms with the cock of a finger and ice wolves and bears to lie at her feet, a dark sorceress who cut out her heart and offered it to the old gods for powers undreamed of. _But young and beautiful for all that, _he thinks, _why must all dark sorceresses be so scintillating_?

Ser Hans relaxes. "That should weigh heavily with my good-sister. She is a gentle soul, truly, for all that men like to say that she is as cold as she is fair."

"Fair?" Theon asks, deciding to turn on his charm. He smiles at his hostess. "Can she be as fair as the Lady Anna?" _Two pretty sisters, _he thinks, idly wondering if he can bag both of them, one after the other. _I've never had two pretty sisters one after the other. Or together, come to think of it. _

Lady Anna, the dear, sweet, ignorant girl, turns a pretty shade of pink. Compliments are coin she has seldom been paid in - certainly not through the long years of her lonely girlhood. Certainly not after the short, sweet days of her courtship or her loveless marriage. "You are too kind, Ser Theon," she mumbles, looking down at her feet. "Elsa has always been beautifuller than me. I mean," she says nervously, fiddling with her hair, "more beautiful. More beautiful than me."

"By all the gods, Anna," Hans says sharply, his facade cracking by a sliver. He tucks her hair firmly behind her ear and shoots a cold look at Theon. A warning. "Stop fidgeting like a child." But behind her husband's back, Theon shoots her a smile – a secret smile that causes her to start violently and put her elbow in the butter dish.

* * *

_The other woman's smile faded. "What we are is what you made us. On Bear Island every child learns to fear krakens rising from the sea."_

\- **A Dance with Dragons**

* * *

Two sisters, little girls from the village, play in the snow. Their castles are chest-high, their knights armed with sticks, armored in stones. The older girl, with her carrot-colored braids, lies down in a fresh patch and spreads her arms and legs to trace out a winged fairy. But her little sister, her hair a softer rose-gold, kneels and carefully cobbles a snowball together, just as she has been taught. Elsa knows all about them, all about the candied apples that Merium sneaks from her mother's pantry and the velvet hood that little Elsa loves but is only allowed to wear on feast-days and name-days. Little Elsa, named for her.

"Ellie, put on your mittens," the older one says, "Mama'll be mad at me if you catch a cold."

Five-year-old Ellie pokes her tongue out. "Shan't." Her mitts hang from a cord on her neck - warm new ones of red wool, as red as her plump cheeks.

"Lady Elsa sent them specially for all of us," Mirrie reminds her, sitting up and scraping snow off her hair. "What if she's looking down from her castle right now, watching us? You wouldn't want to make her cross, would you?"

"_Mirrie_," little Ellie wails but with a quick glance at the castle looming behind her, she slips her mittens over her hands again._ Fear was the only way Anna ever did her duty either, _Elsa thinks and it saddens her to remember that the last time she and her sister were so carefree they were no older than Mirrie and Ellie.

She turns slowly to her own duty. "I shall be pleased to bid welcome to Theon Greyjoy," she tells the messenger smoothly. Hans has sent him to her on his swiftest horse, hours before the rest of the Greyjoy party straggling from the castle. He is shivering in his stained furs and taking pity on him, she says, "You will want to warm and refresh yourself before you leave, no doubt. Go down to the village - you can see the children playing behind the cottages, yes? - and tell them that the Lady Elsa has sent you."

"My thanks, Your Ladyship." He bows and adds, "Meaning no offense, m'lady, but its beastly cold here."

She smiles faintly at him. "Yes, I suppose it must be," she acknowledges, "for my part, I have never felt the cold."

He lingers and unbidden, voices an opinion of his own. Others may say what they will of the Lady of Arendelle, her own people have never been one to slander her, nor fear her unduly either. "Them krakens," he says and spits, to make his opinion plain. "Never up to any demned good, are they?"

"No," she agrees. From a thousand years and more, the folk of the Drowned God and the folk who follow the old ways, have been at war. Every child from Bear Island to Arendelle to White Harbor has known to dread and despair of the krakens. In that, Elsa is not alone.

"I hope my lady will deal with them as they deserve." Squirming, the man adds in a low voice as though fearing a reprimand, "Ser Hans and my Lady Anna seemed mighty friendly with the Greyjoy."

"They would," Elsa murmurs. Anna was always too sweet and trusting, Hans a convivial fox. "But you may be sure that I will deal with them as they deserve." He doffs his cap to her, grinning, and she waves him away.

When she turns back to the window again, the children have slipped back home. Perhaps it is for the best. By the time Stark's men and his foster brother reach her, the sun is at its highest point in the sky. She watches them from her frosted window, leaving their horses at the foot of the sweeping stairs that lead into her palace, too slippery to be taken save on foot. Stout and sturdy northmen all, as like to her own people that she would never be able to tell the twain apart.

Their leader though, the pretty lordling in his black plate and mail... _A boy off the Iron Islands, _she thinks darkly. _And we all know what _those_ are made of. Salt and seaweed and sin. _The wolves at her feet seem to sense her agitation. When the men pass through the open doors to her hall, they rouse and snarl, fangs bared.

"The White Witch," she hears one say, quite distinctly. When she turns her eye on him, he is the first to drop to his knees and whimper. For mercy or his mother's milk, who can say? Others follow, those fierce mailed men toppling like the ninepins she and Anna used to play with, when struck by the weighted lead ball. And in the end, it is only the pretty lordling with his dancing black eyes who still stands before her. He flashes her a white smile, a knowing smile and she thinks that if ever a face was made for laughing, his was.

"Lady Elsa," he says, sweeping her a courtly bow. "I am Theon Greyjoy, son to Lord Balon Greyjoy and heir to the Iron Islands, foster brother and ambassador to His Grace, Robb Stark, the King in the North."

She curls her hands around the armrests in her throne. "Be welcome, Theon Greyjoy," she says curtly, "and state your business plainly. It does not please me to have visitors linger. It is only as a favor to my good-brother that I receive you at all."

"But surely you owe it to your liege lord to receive an envoy, Lady Elsa."

"He is my liege lord in name alone," she says frostily. "Arendelle is small and self-contained, we have always kept to ourselves and Winterfell has been content to ignore us. So it has been for a hundred years and more. Why now does Winterfell seek out Arendelle? We have sent off our men so that the boy king can play at his southron wars - what more would you ask of us?"

As she speaks she cannot help but become agitated at the presumption of this Ironborn boy and his spoilt little lord. The wolves at her feet stir and growl menacingly and the snowflakes on her cloak seem to dance.

"King Robb is only avenging his father's murder, as is meet."

"A dutiful son then. Should I then seek to avenge my father and mother by making war on the sea?"

The boy's lip curls in disdain. "The sea is a force of nature."

"So is Tywin Lannister, by all accounts," she points out dryly. "Robb Stark is a fool and a proud, vengeful fool at that."

"They call him the Young Wolf for good reason. I have fought beside him in every battle, he has not yet lost one," Theon says defensively.

"A handful of battles does not win a war," she says softly, her eyes narrowing. _The gods know if I know nothing, this much I know._ Visions flicker behind her half-closed eyelids – iron bangles, frost cracking steel mittens, the slow burn of a whip against bare skin and her sister, a limp rag doll, a trickle of blood from the side of her mouth. With a mighty effort, she holds herself in place and opens her eyes wider, forcing them to meet the mockery in his. She will not yield. She will _not_. "State your business, Theon Greyjoy, and then be gone."

So he begins, spinning out a courtier's words and at the end she cocks her head to the side and says, "The boy king might wear the crown but I see that it is Catelyn Tully who holds the scepter. I see that I am summoned south like an errant kitchenmaid. Why should I come with you for a cause I do not believe in, for a king I expect will soon fall? I am content here, I am safe here." _And you do not have the wherewithal to drag me where I will not be sent, _she thinks with satisfaction. And for a moment, the power she has dreaded and feared for years is sweet to savor.

"There will be concessions for Arendelle, your people will be sent back to their homes-"

"Do you think me such a soft-hearted fool as to fall for that?" The answer is plainly yes. She tries to look cold and forbidding but her face twists in guilt. _A woman's heart after all. _

He says nothing. Instead, he takes a step closer to her and involuntarily she curls back against her throne. Her wolves rise, fur prickling and fangs bared, but he takes another step and another until he is but a foot away from the dais. Her fierce defenders circle him and she knows the cold must cut through to his skin, past even layers of steel and boiled leather. But they cannot defend her from herself. _What a comely face he has, _she thinks in spite of herself. _So… warm._

"Content." He slides the word like a skinning knife through flesh and smiles. "A beautiful woman like you? Tell me, my lady, when was the last time you set foot outside Arendelle? When was the last time a man paid court to you as you were meant to be courted?"

"You are presumptuous, Greyjoy." She sucks in her lower lip and then, remembering that she is not a little girl, frowns coldly at him.

"So I have been told, and often. Are you never lonely?"

"Never." _Always. _"This is my sanctuary."

"Say rather your cell." His voice is pitched so low that it does not go beyond them. "I had one too, my lady, since I was a boy of nine."

"And are you your own man now?" she asks dryly. "No, I think not."

His eyes flash in resentment for a moment, before he captures himself. "Not today," he says lightly. "But soon. Open your eyes, sorceress. The world is changing."

"But not fast enough," she blurts out.

His eyes burn a hole through hers, as though they could peel past silk and skin and sinew to her shivering, naked heart. "How will you know if you never dare see?" He bows and steps back.

"I need time," she says fretfully, her voice loud enough to carry back to his men. "I will not be pressed into such a grave undertaking."

"Certainly, my lady," he says, the soul of politeness. "Perhaps we might discuss it over a meal?"

She almost laughs at his presumption. "I think not, Ser," she says coolly. "I believe that you shall be pleased to take your men and make your way back to my sister and good-brother. I believe that you shall then be delighted to wait before I am ready to make my answer to you. Or else-" she adds, smoothing her gown and smiling wolfishly, "I believe that there might be repercussions that you would be ill equipped to face. In the meantime, I invite yourselves to enjoy all the hospitality that Arendelle can offer."

"It would be an honor to wait on the word of so fair a lady," he says gracefully, "And while I wait, I am sure I can find something to occupy myself with. Or someone."

* * *

_'Spring has forgotten this garden,' they cried, 'so we will live here all the year round.' The Snow covered up the grass with her great white cloak, and the Frost painted all the trees silver._

**\- The Selfish Giant**

* * *

"Take me with you."

She lies still in bed, a whispering little china doll. Red-gold hair fans out on the sheets, in the candlelight the freckles on her nose stand out starker than ever. He knots the ties at the neck of his fine linen shirt and pretends not to hear. But then she tugs on his elbow with small, insistent fingers and it is harder to ignore her.

"Theon, please, take me with you. Elsa won't mind and Hans-" an edge of hysteria, the kind he has a healthy experience and dread of from chance encounters with virgins, creeps into her voice. "I loathe him! I don't want him, I don't want his baby! This was all a mistake, I never thought, I was a child and I thought I was in love, I-"

He gathers her in his arms, tumbled hair and clinging sheets, and wishes that she _were _a peasant girl he could toss a coin to in lieu of her lost maidenhead. But for all her savory innocence, Anna of Arendelle is no maiden, she is another man's wife and soon to be a mother. But that had only served to make her even more delicious when he first saw her, a tart challenge.

Now Theon curses his cocky arrogance and prays that he can soothe her before she can make a scene and wake up the whole castle. "Shh, sweetling," he whispers, rubbing her back, "you know how much I love you, how much these days have meant to me-"

She looks up at him with trusting blue eyes as he continues in this vein. For a moment he marvels at how much she reminds him of Sansa, sweet, pretty, little Sansa whom he had once thought he might marry.

"But I can't," he whispers, "we both can't. We have our duty – you to Arendelle and your unborn child and I to my king."

"Will I never see you again?" she sniffles as he kisses her forehead. She curls around him even tighter, like a vine around the trunk of a tree and he think it'll be beastly long and hard to get her to unwind herself. _But I can deal with it, _he thinks, _just as long as she behaves herself tomorrow at the docks._

"Of course you will, pet," he assures her smoothly. "Dry your tears now. This war will soon be over and I'll be back with her sister and then – who knows? Anything could be possible when Robb is our king."

"I love you," she whispers. "Oh Theon, you have no idea how much."

_Hardly flattering. You seem to love everyone. _"And I love you," he says, "I have never seen a more beautiful woman." _Except your sister, _a small, traitorous voice says.

"Not even Elsa?" A little jealousy creeps into her voice. He can understand – he has had older brothers too. _Before Ned Stark killed them, of course. _

"No, not even Elsa," he lies blithely. It takes a good deal of nuzzling, a few dozen kisses and teary promises, but finally she lets him go, blessedly an hour before daybreak.

They fly the kraken and the direwolf aboard _The Merry Maid_, but in the morning they have set up new flags as well. The green-and-purple pennants of Arendelle, with the profile of a crowned woman embossed in gold.

Lady Elsa watches the shore and the silver palace recede from the deck, a small frown knitting her brows. "I have never been anywhere else," she confesses, with a small catch in her voice.

He nods and suppresses a yawn behind his fingers.

"I did not sleep much either, last night," she murmurs, giving him a wan smile. They call her the White Witch but when Theon looks at her, he sees a child, as innocent and trusting as her sister.

"You must be cold, my lady," he says, offering her an arm. "Would you not rather wear a cloak?"

She shrugs. "It is all the same to me," she said, "I have never felt the cold. The Targaryens were said to never feel heat either," she adds resentfully when he raises his eyebrows at her either. "I do not see why it should surprise you so. We are descended in an unbroken line from the First Men, just as they are of Valyria. Some say we are even older than they, that we are come from the Children of the Forest." _Or the White Walkers, _she thinks with a small shiver. There have been so many tales told of the sorcerers of Arendelle that she finds it hard to keep them all straight.

"Yes, my lady," he says, seeming suitably chastised. "But as I remember, Targaryens can burn. And the Children of the Forest can freeze."

* * *

_Conceal it._  
_ Don't feel it._  
_ Don't let it show._

**_\- _Frozen  
**

* * *

_A poor sort of king, _she thinks when introduced to Robb Stark. Barely fifteen and still growing, she towers over him. He's growing an innocuous peach fuzz on his cheeks, the ghost of a beard, and she thinks that his men would do better to laugh at him and turn back home. But that is before she hears him speak.

She curls her toes inside her boots and thinks what a child she must seem next to him, petulant and tongue-tied and whispery-voiced. She was never forward or demonstrative as a child, that was always Anna, and after her first outburst she was taught to be even more withdrawn, more recalcitrant. _What did you think would happen to me, Father? _she thinks with a flare of resentment, not for the first time. _Did you think you could lock me away forever? Did you ever think that you might die and leave me alone? Did you think at all, outside your fear?_

"You must be proud of your son, my lady," she tells Lady Catelyn, in a feeble attempt at small talk.

The proud woman's blue eyes flash. "Yes," she says, "I have always been proud of Robb." She is as wary as all the southroners are around Elsa. _Arendelle is to the North and the Iron Islands what Dorne was to the Targaryens, _she thinks, _but we are a part of the North and they __of us and we have a truce, an understanding, no matter how uneasy. __But we might as well be snarks and grumkins so far as these Andals are concerned. _

The maester who they bring to her wears a collar with dozens of colored links and one among them is Valyrian steel. "We do not have much use for maesters in Arendelle," she tells him to his face. "We never have, for such southron ways."

"Far be it for me to question the old ways," he says gracefully. "Herbalists and midwives can serve as well as a maester in many cases, but in the manner of the more arcane arts-"

She stands up abruptly, knocking against the table and sending a dozen frail scrolls scattering. "You are trying to study me," she says flatly, "that was not in our agreement."

Theon finds her hours later in the godswood, her rage simmering down into a sulk. He skirts carefully around the iced path that she has frozen into being (accidentally, of course) and says dryly, "You know, if I wanted to be alone I'd not make myself so easy to find. A trail of breadcrumbs could not be less subtle."

If she had anyone else in the world she could trust - a family servant, her sister, gods, even _Hans_ \- she would have sent Greyjoy away. But in the midst of a war camp, in the south, she is alone and he is the only one she has even the faintest connection to, so she lets him stay. _For a kraken he is not so bad, _she has had to acknowledge. _But then he is only half a kraken, half a northman. _Sometimes he can even make her laugh - though she does not make a habit of doing it in front of him.

She plays with the end of her braid, slipping loose from the twisted bun she usually wears it in. "I will not be made a fool of," she says quietly. "My father knew well how to deal with those grey rats when they came scampering and sneaking around and I can too."

He perches on a flat rock at her feet. "Well, I suppose he was curious."

"Him and all the rest of them, ever since there was a Citadel." She chews on a hangnail. "And possibly before. To know a secret is to make it your own."

"And is your magic a secret?"

"It's in my blood," she says simply. "It was in my father's and his before him since there ever was an island in the Bay of Seals. The power of ice and snow." _But not in Anna's blood._ "It cannot be explained or reasoned away."

"The maesters say magic fled the world after the dragons died," he remarks absently.

"The fire wyverns and worms from the south," she says, curling her hands in her lap. She is clad only in the lightest of silks, yet the heat of the southron autumn is almost oppressive. _This is not my place. _"Perhaps there are still dragons left. Ice dragons. When I was a little girl, in happier days, my father would tell me stories about them, dragons north of the Wall that The Children tamed and rode."

"And yet he hid you away for years," Theon says idly. "His pretty heiress. Such a shame that was."

_He feared me, _she thinks but it is not something she can say aloud. _Perhaps he was jealous of me. _"Mine were... unusually strong," she says. "Too strong for a child to handle. He did it to spare me, to make my life easier."

"And can you handle them now?"

_No. Why else would I turn tail and flee from my sister? _"Yes," she says, more bravely than she feels. She knows what he is thinking, what they have all thought of her - that she is half-mad, a danger to herself and others, a hermit, a hysterical girl. _Half-weak, half-crazed. Pitiful and dreadful. _

Unbidden, he takes her hand from her lap, turning it over and pressing a kiss in her palm before curling her fingers over it like a keepsake. It is a presumption, but a pleasant one and she has not the heart to pull away. "Oh are you not the most perfect chevalier," she says coolly, with some sad attempt at mockery. It does not seem to work for he flashes a smile up at her as if her reaction pleases him.

"In the face of such beauty, yes. You will find me less... chivalrous if I am roused." For a moment they sit quite still and then she untangles her hand from his and sits up straighter, priming her mouth into a thin, stubborn line. But before she can say anything he says quietly, "But my lady, I would advise you not to fear. We are in the midst of a war."

"Of course I know-"

"-and so there is nothing to handle," he says, flashing her a mocking smile. "There is no need to wind yourself up so tightly, like the coils on a mangonel. Let loose. Teach them who you are. Show them _what_ you are."

* * *

**A/N: Well I've been planning to write a Frozen/Game of Thrones crossover (and especially an Elsa/Theon pairing!) for a long time, so this has been in the works for quite a while with constant editing and retouching and generally being forgotten and rewarmed at unperiodic intervals. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed it!**


	2. Oxcross

**Oxcross, 299 AC**

They toasted their victory with the spoils of war.

The men who fought on foot were served as much ale and beer as they could stand, their lords and knights treated themselves to Stafford Lannister's private stores of wine - Arbor golds and Dornish reds, the sweet and the sour. The dead man would never drink them again.

"The Lion will be wroth," Elsa told Theon as he pressed a cup of spiced hippocrass into her hands. "Stafford Lannister was his wife's brother." Tywin Lannister had loved his wife well, theirs was a story that had written itself into many a pretty ballad. At the very least, the slaughter of a member of his family would be an affront to his pride.

"Let him be." Theon was unconcerned. "Robb will beard him in his den as he did this one."

Over the laughter and the drunken merriment, she could hear a singer. His voice was clear and true as he played before the boy king. _A boy only in years, _Elsa corrected herself. He had proven himself, every battle he had fought had ended in a decisive victory. "_And the stars in the night were the eyes of his wolf, and the wind itself was their song_."

"You proved your mettle today, my lady," the Greyjoy told her.

She ducked her head. "I did as I was bid. The victory was Robb Stark's."

"He will want to thank you."

"He will want to press more burdens on my back," she said wryly. That was the way of kings. The world could be run no other way. "And then more and more, until I break."

"Robb isn't like that-"

"The boy you knew might not have been," she said, thinking him quite a child. "But the king you know is a different man." That might give him something to chew on.

"He is sending an envoy to the Iron Islands," Theon said conversationally. "To my lord father."

His grey eyes were thoughtful when she looked up into them. "But it is not you whom he sends."

"No." He smiled as though it were no concern of his, a playful smile, even teasing. "His lady mother advised him against it. She thought I might turn traitor, even though I have been his brother in all but name since he was four." He shrugged. "Anyway, he needs me here. He promises me a more fitting command and more men to lead. Robett Glover will serve in the Iron Islands."

She knew the tall, proud lordling a little. He had a way with words and he was not unintelligent. "A measured choice," she agreed. "But he will serve in _your_ place. Who better to treat with a man than his son?" She was planting doubts in fertile soil, she knew. This was a proud boy, quick to take umbrage, still uncertain of his place in the world. But she was Robb Stark's vassal only in name - he had no hold of her loyalty in heart and soul. He might win a hundred battles, but that did not mean winning the war.

_And I must do what is best for Arendelle. Always. _

"I will have no sons," her father had told her when she was nine. Her mother had miscarried yet again. It happened every year or so and Elsa was used to it. Every time her mother emerged from her chamber a little paler, a little smaller and more shrunken. A little quieter. Soon she would disappear, it seemed to Elsa, more wraith than woman. "You are my heir, Elsa."

"Mamma could still have another baby." She had said it without much hope but it was what was expected of her. A good daughter prayed for brothers who would carry on the family name.

But her father had shaken his head. "No. Another birth would be her death." Tears filled his eyes, the first she had ever seen. "I love her, Elsa. I could not do that to her." She had squeezed his hand and that had seemed to bring him comfort. "You must be my son for me, little Elsa. You are strong and brave and clever, but you must be more. And you must do what is best for Arendelle. Always. No matter your fears or doubts, no matter what other ties men might claim to have on you, you must always think first of Arendelle."

"I promise, Papa," she had vowed, as solemn as only a nine-year-old could be. "I promise."

She had failed Arendelle once already. When Anna had married Hans, she had been glad to shift the reins of power over to him. Why? Was it because she feared herself too weak - as Hans had subtly managed to suggest? Or was it because she knew herself to be too strong to live among the world of common men? Hans was not the man she had hoped he would be, not the man he had pretended to be. He hurt her sister. He was spoiled and cunning and fixated only on luxury and outward appearances. He was no good for Arendelle.

_When this war is done, whether for good or ill, I will have him put down, _she thought. _I will not fail Arendelle again. _

Theon Greyjoy tried to laugh her words off. "My father will not know me," he said. "I was his boy as long as I was Ned Stark's."

"Did you love the Stark like a father then?"

"I liked him well enough." Theon shrugged. "He was a fair guardian and not unkind. His lady wife though, cold as a fish that one. Ice chip eyes always watching me, as though she was afraid I'd corrupt her sons or rape her daughters the moment her back was turned." He licked his lips. "The girl Sansa, Robb's sister, she was shaping up to be a pretty one. Wouldn't mind taking her to wife."

Elsa laughed. "You must be mad if you think Robb Stark would give you his sister."

Theon scowled at her. "I'll be Lord of the Iron Islands one day," he told her. "In the old days, we were kings so there's as much royal blood in my veins as in his. And he needs his father to win his war."

"Then go ask him," she taunted him. "Ask him to give you his sweet maiden sister if she's ever rescued from King's Landing." _He never will, _she knew. _He needs a princess to make an alliance. To make friends out of foes, just as he did when he promised his sister Arya to the Freys. He already feels himself so sure of Theon Greyjoy's loyalty that he will never give him the girl. And in that he is wrong. The wolf and the squid might be friends but they will never be brothers.  
_

King Robb summoned her. "You fought courageously today, my lady."

"I did not fight at all, Your Grace," she said, curtsying. "I had a ring of men all around me to keep me safe." They had not really tested her powers, as though they were unsure of how best to use her. All she was asked to do was harry the Lannister forces as she thought best. Flying spikes of ice had served, she saw no reason to exert herself for a battle in whose outcome she had little interest. In truth it had been more of a rout than a battle after Robb Stark had sent his wolf in and the horses had gone mad when they'd caught his scent. The cavalry had been sent in afterwards.

"Nevertheless, I thank you. Your strength and courage awes you and your grace and beauty is a delight to us all." Pretty words, empty southron chivalry that his mamma must have thought him. She was northwoman, they did not soften her. His men raised their cups to her and gave a rousing cheer and she suffered through the embarrassment of it with a polite smile. One of the Umbers eyed her hungrily, no doubt he thought that she would make him a strong, splendid wife. No doubt he thought her 'spirited', feisty perhaps - a delightful handful in the sheets. She was not spirited. She was only herself.

"I must beg your aid once more, my lady."

"I am your vassal, sire," she said, unsmiling. "It is my duty to serve you."

_But it was not always so, _she thought bleakly. Her father had told her, Arendelle had not always been in thrall to Winterfell. Once, in the days of the long winter, they had been kings. They had knelt to neither Stark nor Bolton, indeed they had been more than men. _And we were smitten down in our pride, _she remembered him ending the story. Always sadly, always wearily. _And a curse was laid upon our house. _That was her story, a story that the maesters did not know. A story that this Stark, raised on his southron mother's milk and fairytales, did not know.

"You will ride west with me."

"As you say, sire. Might I ask where?"

He smiled at her, he had been preparing for this moment she realized. She was only an excuse. "Casterly Rock," he said, milking the moment for all its glory. "We will pierce the lion's heart." And the clamor that exploded, with men yelling and cheering and fists and mugs smashed on tables, was like to blow her ears off.

* * *

He was sulking as he took his leave. He had not asked her to see him off, indeed he had not even told her that he was going away, but she had wanted to come.

_Well, cannot a woman have an eye for a comely man? _She had defended herself in her own mind. Not that it mattered - who was there to gainsay her? She was sovereign Lady of Arendelle, not some frail girl who must always be attended by a chaperone. She might do as she pleased.

Word traveled like wildfire in a camp. Everyone knew that Robb Stark had sent Theon Greyjoy off to the coast, along with Glover and Karstark, to raid along the coast. And some, like her, knew that he did not like it one bit. _He thinks it beneath him, _she knew. _To harry and raid peasants, like a common brigand. He hungers for a greater part of the glory. _Robb Stark should have seen it. But he was barely sixteen, he could not see everything. And the cooler, wiser heads who gave him counsel - they must have seen it. But they were northmen. They did not like the Ironborn. Perhaps they felt it suitable that an Ironborn raid the coast, as his ancestors had done for a thousand years - perhaps it gave them satisfaction to decide that there was nothing more that he was worthy of.

_We carry our prejudices with us, wherever we go, _she thought. _The grudges our fathers nursed over cups of wine and passed on to us when we were children and they did not think we were listening. The sorrows and secret shames our mothers clutched to their hearts and whispered to us even as they sung us lullabies. __They cling to us like our shadows._ The gods knew that she did.

Theon Greyjoy made a dashing figure, all in black armor and about to mount his fine black stallion. Yes, she thought, this was a man that a woman might be glad to rest her eye on. And if she were not a lady-

He did not acknowledge her, even though he had seen her. "I came to wish you luck," she told him, neatly sidestepping the men who bustled all around them. Men off to war, many of them to their deaths no doubt.

He scowled at her. "There's no luck needed in what I'm going to be doing," he told her. "Nor skill either. Burning haystacks and cows and raping village girls."

From the embroidered pouch she wore at her belt, she slid out a sliver of obsidian. Good luck, her father had always told her. It was tradition. Obsidian was as common as iron on Arendelle. Men and women, high and low, wore slivers of it on chains or in rings for luck. It was a pretty thing of course, sharp and glossy-black, but people outside Arendelle (and many in) always wondered just _why_ it was considered lucky. Not her.

"Keep it for my sake," she told him and pressed it within his hand. "I would hate to see anything spoil that pretty face of yours."

A spark of amusement glittered in his eyes for a moment. "So would I, my lady," he said. "What else would I woo you with? Surely not my wit, for I have none."

She stepped closer to him, close enough to cup his chin in her hand if she dared. Close enough that she had taken another step, he would have met her lips with his. If she dared.

She did not. She stepped back, which seemed to amuse him even more. "I wish you luck," she said mechanically, feeling her cheeks heat. She was blushing.

He raised her fingers to his lips. "Chivalry is good sport, my lady," he told her. "For you rather more than for me, I fear though. Meet me again when you have a little less to say."

"I do not stand for impertinence," she told him coldly, turning away. "Not from boys." He might be a pretty lad but his crudeness was not as engaging as he thought it.

The Greatjon had been watching her, she saw as she hurried away, clutching a fistful of her cloak tightly. "Do you stand it from men then?" he called after her. His men laughed.

She stopped and tried to clutch at the ragged scraps of her dignity. Oh she had been a fool indeed. And worse, there had been witnesses. "I know no men who are worthy of the name," she said, head held high. "Not since my father died."

The Greatjon laughed, so loud and hearty she was sure that it must have been heard all over the camp. It was more a battle-cry than a laugh, really. "Little girl," he said. She was a tall woman but he must have been one of the tallest men in the Seven Kingdoms, well over seven feet high. More horse than man. "Little girl, you've never known a man." He had the audacity to wink at her. "But have no fear, I'll teach you."

* * *

**A/N: Yes, I know that Robb went to the Crag after Oxcross... and in this fanfic I'm having him go to Casterly Rock. Because in this fanfic he has Elsa.**


End file.
